What the Düsseldorfer Tabelle is, and what it is not
The Düsseldorfer Tabelle is issued by the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court and updated in coordination with the other higher regional courts and the Deutscher Familiengerichtstag, the German family court conference. It has no force of law. Courts apply it because it produces a consistent practice, not because they are obliged to.
It is normally updated on 1 January. The minimum maintenance figure underlying the first income bracket follows the Minimum Maintenance Ordinance, the Mindestunterhaltsverordnung.
The table answers two questions: how much maintenance is appropriate at a given income, and how that amount changes with the age of the child. Everything else, and that is most of it, is not in the table.
The table: needs amounts
What matters is the age of the child, not the school year. The bracket changes in the month in which the child turns six, twelve or 18.
The table is calibrated for two dependants, without regard to their rank. Where there are more or fewer, placing the payer in a lower or higher income bracket may be appropriate.
The final column is not a floor for the payer but a distribution check. The needs-control amount, the Bedarfskontrollbetrag, is intended to keep income and maintenance burden in a reasonable balance. Where it is undercut, the payer is placed in the next lower bracket. Bracket 1 carries two figures because there the protected minimum itself forms the limit, depending on whether the payer is in employment.
The table amount is not the payment amount. What is actually transferred appears in the next section.
From the table amount to the payment amount
Child benefit is set off against the table amount under section 1612b of the German Civil Code, the BGB: half of it for minor children, all of it for adult children. Child benefit in 2026 is €259.00 per child across the board, so the half share is €129.50.
What remains is the payment amount. The official version sets it out in a separate annex:
Four steps to your figure
- establish the income. Take the net income of the parent liable for cash maintenance over the past twelve months, and adjust it. How that is done is set out two sections below. This step decides the outcome, not the table.
- read off the bracket. Find the row your adjusted income falls into. The table rates assume two dependants. Where there are fewer or more, a bracket higher or lower may be appropriate.
- read off the payment amount. Take each child's age bracket into the payment amounts table. There is nothing to calculate: child benefit has already been deducted there.
- check the protected minimum. Subtract the total of all payment amounts from the adjusted income. If less remains than the protected minimum, this is a shortfall case and the amounts are reduced. The rates appear in the next section.
What you arrive at is a sound order of magnitude. It is not a calculation of your individual case, because additional needs, shared residence, further dependants and the adjustment of income all remain outside it.
The protected minimum: what must be left to the payer
In metropolitan areas this is the point at which a closer look pays off.
Where income is insufficient for all dependants, this is a shortfall case, a Mangelfall. The amount remaining after deduction of the protected minimum is then distributed in proportion to the dependants' base amounts. Minor children and adult children treated as equivalent rank first, under section 1609 no. 1 BGB.
Towards minor children there is a heightened obligation to earn. A payer who earns less than could reasonably be expected may have a notional income attributed to them.
Adjusted net income: where the dispute happens
The table presupposes an income. Which income that is, is the question at issue in almost every set of proceedings.
The starting point is net income over the past twelve months, and for the self-employed usually the average of the past three years. Deductions include:
- work-related expenses, frequently applied as a flat five per cent
- contributions to supplementary retirement provision, within limits
- liabilities arising from the marriage, although not every instalment is recognised
- the costs of contact, within narrow bounds
Items that appear on no payslip are added back: benefits in kind such as the private use of a company car, tax refunds, rental income, investment income.
For the self-employed and for shareholders there is a further layer. Drawings, retained profits and depreciation are assessed differently under maintenance law than under tax law. A tax return is a starting point, not a result.
Anyone careless here pays too much for years, or receives too little for years. The table is the easy part.
Additional needs and exceptional needs
The table amount covers ongoing needs. Two categories fall outside it and are owed in addition.
Additional needs, Mehrbedarf, are regular and foreseeable: nursery fees, after-school care, sustained tutoring, ongoing treatment costs. Both parents bear them in proportion to their incomes.
Exceptional needs, Sonderbedarf, are irregular and unusually high, for instance orthodontic treatment or a necessary school trip. They can be claimed retrospectively, but only within one year.
Health and long-term care insurance contributions are not included in the table amounts. They are owed separately.
Adult children
Reaching the age of 18 changes more than the age bracket.
Both parents are now liable in proportion to their incomes, rather than one through care and one through payment. The full child benefit is set off. And the appropriate protected minimum, at a minimum of €1,750, is higher than the necessary one.
Adult children up to the age of 21 remain privileged if they live in a parent's household and are in general school education. They continue to rank first. Where they live with a parent, maintenance follows the fourth age bracket of the table.
Students who do not live with their parents have their own needs rate: as a rule €990 a month, including up to €440 for rent with heating and service charges. Tuition fees and health insurance are not included. This rate does not follow from the table, and it can be exceeded where needs are higher or where the parents' circumstances justify it.
Shared residence
Where both parents care for the child roughly equally, the table does not apply without more. Needs are then determined from the combined income of both parents and apportioned between them, taking into account the additional costs the arrangement creates.
When a genuine shared residence arrangement, a Wechselmodell, exists is a question of the individual case, and not solely a question of overnight stays.
Tax treatment
For the payer, child maintenance is not deductible as a special expense as long as there is an entitlement to child benefit or to the child tax allowance. Relief comes through those two routes, not through the maintenance itself. This is a widespread misconception, and the reason the question of deductibility is asked so often.
The position differs for maintenance paid to a divorced spouse, where limited real splitting or deduction as an extraordinary burden may be available.
What you can do next
With both tables and the four steps, you have an order of magnitude. For most separations with a regular income, that is enough to reach an understanding.
As soon as a company, self-employment, a shared residence arrangement or irregular income is involved, the route runs through the adjustment of income, and that cannot be read off a table. A first consultation is worth having before figures are exchanged. How we work in family law is set out on the practice area page.